The Gods Come To You
by who won the race back home
Summary: Finn makes the football team sophomore year, but he needs help with his footwork.


A/N: I have head canon that Finn is oddly good at DDR. This is the result.

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><p><em>"Finn! What are you doing?" Kurt says through a barely stifled laugh.<em>

_All Finn can think is, 'This is Puck's fault.'_

The summer before sophomore year he and Puck tried out for varsity football, and either through a miracle, or the fact that McKinley hadn't won a game in years, they both made it. The second half of his summer was filled with two-a-days, which sucked, and weekends where he mowed the neighbor's lawns to help out his mom a bit with grocery money (but mostly it was so he could buy new XBox games).

Less than two weeks into practice, Finn got the starting quarterback job, which said more about the team than his skills. He had a good arm, but was pretty awkward and slow, and he had a tough time remembering all the plays, but Coach Tanaka thought he was the best guy for the job, and Finn wasn't going to complain. Everyday, he would go up against guys like Karofsky and Azimio in practice, and everyday he would get his ass handed to him. It was kind of embarrassing, and Finn knew he had to get faster or more agile or _something._ Coach was no help, he always looked like he was on the verge of a heart attack, and the guys he actually liked on the team, Puck, Mike, and Matt, were just naturally quick, so he had to figure this out on his own. He ran extra drills after practice and worked out like crazy, but it didn't really do a whole lot for his game. At this point he thought he pretty much would just have to hope that he wouldn't get killed on the field.

On a rare Saturday off he and Puck headed over to the arcade for a bit of stress relief, and to win back their high score in Time Crisis. They used to do this all the time freshman year. Finn's mom dropping them off at the mall on the way to her second shift job, Puck's mom picking them up on the way home from her 9 to 5. They kicked mutant zombie sloth ass in House of the Dead, and had the high score in at least five other games. But pretty much every time they went Puck would get distracted by some hot girl walking by the arcade, and would vanish, leaving Finn to his own devices.

So that Saturday after, seriously, twenty minutes, Puck had disappeared and Finn was left alone. Again. And he had run out of quarters, so he let himself get distracted by whatever else was going on. One machine in the corner of the arcade caught his attention. It flashed red and blue lights, and huge speakers on either side of the screen blasted annoying pop music in Chinese or Japanese or some language he didn't understand. A skinny little dude was twitching all over the place, matching his feet to the arrows scrolling up the screen. Part of him was impressed, and the other part of him wanted to bust out laughing because it was just ridiculous looking. But this kid was _fast _and his feet were doing things that Finn didn't even think were possible.

Shit, maybe it would help.

There was no way in hell Finn was going to play it in the arcade, he would trip over his own feet and make a bigger idiot of himself than the people who were actually _good _at it. Plus, knowing his luck, some asshole from the team would come in and catch him and call him a fag and give him shit for the rest of the year. He texted Puck to say he was leaving, and then headed home to google some stuff.

Turns out this game was called Dance Dance Revolution and it was a pretty big thing. There were, like, a billion versions of it, but he found a couple for the PS2 that were super cheap, and a mat with the arrows on it for not much more. Finn asked his mom to order them for him online after he gave her the money, and she gave him an odd look, but didn't say anything. By the time he got home from practice a couple of Wednesdays before school was about to start, there was a box from Amazon on his bed.

Finn set it all up in the basement, where they had furnished a corner with a couch and TV. He set up his old PS2 down there too, since he didn't play it much after getting an XBox 360, but sometimes smashing cars up in Burnout 3 was the only way to deal with stuff sucking. There was also a much smaller chance of his mom catching him making an ass of himself down there.

He plugged in the mat thing and turned on the PS2. It was awkward trying to use his feet to go through the menus, but he finally got to the song selection screen. It was set on the easiest level, he picked the least annoying song he could find, and hit play. A colorful screen appeared and a slow stream of arrows scrolled upward. Finn tried to hit the arrows at his feet at the right time, but he didn't get any of them. At all. The mat began slipping on the rug, the game started booing him, and the meter at the very top of the screen drained super fast. Then, before he even got a chance to really try, a "game over" screen popped up and he was taken back to the main menu.

Well this sucked.

Finn glared at the TV and stomped upstairs to see if he could find a way to keep the mat from slipping all over the place when he played. He rummaged through the junk drawer and found a roll of duct tape. Back in the basement he taped the mat to the area rug and tried again. He failed in thirty seconds. This continued for a couple hours until his mom called him for dinner. After, he headed back down and kept trying. By the time he decided to go to bed, he could get through the easiest song on the easiest level without messing up too bad. This was progress.

Everyday for the rest of summer Finn would head home after football and play. Slowly, really, really slowly, he got better. He figured out that the arrows matched up to the various beats in the songs, and once he got that, things got a lot easier. He was a pretty decent drummer, he _had _rhythm, it just didn't translate to his feet really well. By the time school started, though, he could beat all the songs on the easiest level, and even a couple on the next difficulty up. At practice, he was getting sacked, like, four times instead of six. Coach thought his extra drills were working, Puck and the guys just thought he stopped being as awkward. There was no way in hell he was going to tell anyone that he was playing a Japanese dancing game.

DDR just became a part of his life. Finn would play it when he had time, after football practice, or on the weekends. Then the glee club started, and he thought it would help with his dancing skills, but it didn't. But he got better and better with his footwork, and in the second game of the season, he only got sacked twice. It was pretty fucking awesome. Kurt Hummel joined the team a week later and they actually _won. _Finn knew it wasn't because he could move a little faster and get hit a little less, but he still wanted to feel that the win was at least partially because of him.

But then Quinn got pregnant and moved in. Then it wasn't his and she moved out. Then they barely won Sectionals. Then he started dating Rachel. Then he stopped. Then his mom started dating Kurt's dad. Then they moved in together. Then they didn't. Then they bombed at Regionals. A stupid video game kind of got lost in all that.

Sometime during the summer before junior year, he headed down to the basement to grab something out of storage for his mom, and saw the mat still taped to the floor and the PS2 gathering dust. He turned the console on and tried to play a song. He was rusty, and his arms flailed awkwardly everywhere as he tried to keep balance, but he got through the song without failing. With everything that had gone on in the last year, he kind of forgot that he really liked this stupid fucking game. It made him feel less uncoordinated, and it was a much more fun way to work out than running.

And that's why, five months later, Kurt came into his room (he said he was looking for his chemistry notebook, but Finn didn't buy it for a second) and found him sweating profusely, stomping on a plastic mat to the beat of a Japanese pop song.


End file.
